He held out his hand; but Van had been caught once that day, and lay still. He whined a little.
“You pore little tyke, I bet you’re hungry. Have you been runnin’ away? Now, see here, I ain’t goin’ to tell on ye, and ef you’ll stay right here I’ll bring ye half my supper.”
Van lay exhausted in the fence-corner, and presently the boy slipped out with a large slice of bread and butter, and a bit of bacon, and, best of all, a bowl of cold water.
Ah, but that water was good! Van lapped it thirstily, every drop. Then he fell upon the bacon and the bread and butter, as greedily as the veriest tramp that ever lived.
“My! Ye shore was hungry,” said the boy. “I’d git ye more ef I dasted to; anyways, ye won’t starve. Landy! I’d like to keep ye, but Pa wouldn’t let me. Anyways, ef ye’ll come with me, I’ll fix ye up a bed.”
Van followed the boy that looked like Pete into a dilapidated barn. The boy doubled an old horse blanket in a corner of the hay-mow.
“Ye kin sleep there, and ye kin git out in the mornin’ through that busted board. There! Jinks! I wish’t you’d stay with me. I’d like to keep ye, awful. I wish’t Pa liked dawgs.”
Up in that hill-cabin home the little boy’s hungry heart yearned to the starved heart of the runaway Prince, and he stooped and kissed him. Then he drew away, as if ashamed, even in the dusk, of so silly an action, and went back to the house, trying to whistle.
Van slept without stirring, until the cold fingers of the dawn made him stretch his stiffened limbs, and realize that he was in a strange land, and that he must be getting on to his home on the Hill-Top. He stole out through the broken board, and was off in the gray of the morning, breakfastless but rested.
And it was westward ho! through the chilling mists, and westward ho! when the sun rose at his back to warm and cheer him. It was westward ho! when the sun shone high and hot above his head, and his mouth was dry and parched again, and his legs moved slowly and stiffly, as if he had aged ten years.